From IT Service Provider to MSP: Why lywand is The Ideal Solution

What is an MSP and How Does it Differ From a Traditional IT Service Provider?

An MSP or managed service provider is a company that proactively and comprehensively manages and offers IT services. The difference to a traditional IT service provider lies primarily in the type of service provision and the nature of the customer relationship.

The Sales Model of Traditional IT Service Providers

System houses, resellers and IT service providers with a traditional sales model offer their customers solutions for setting up the required IT infrastructure. These services are usually offered on a one-off basis in project-related packages. The IT service provider takes care of the system architecture, planning, procurement and installation of the infrastructure. Maintenance and servicing are also provided on an hourly basis. The technology is only modernised and adapted if the customer's situation changes, for example if the number of employees increases and the associated storage requirements rise.

Maintenance work is often only carried out in the event of system failure or damage. Each quotation and invoice is prepared anew in the project business, which enables optimisation but does not allow for scaling compared to the MSP business. Collaboration with the customer's internal IT department leads to frictional losses and makes consistent infrastructure support more difficult.

The internal IT department manages hardware and end devices, but with a limited budget. Software licences are often purchased via IT service providers who act as resellers and also have to be financed from this budget. This requires careful planning and communication to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Functionality of The MSP Model

Managed service providers continuously monitor and maintain IT systems in order to recognise and rectify problems before they lead to major disruptions. Services are often offered at a fixed monthly price, providing customers with a clear cost structure. MSPs offer a wide range of services, including network security, data backup, cloud services and more. Their aim is to build long-term relationships with their customers and act as a kind of outsourced IT department.

Factors such as licence terms, cost fluctuations and the turnover of end devices can be managed centrally by an MSP. This centralised control allows the MSP to manage these aspects in a forward-looking, long-term and consistent manner.

The Advantages of the MSP Model at a Glance

• Scalable infrastructure: New customers can be added more easily and customer infrastructures can grow smoothly.

• Plannable maintenance and servicing: Standardised systems facilitate operation and maintenance protocols, which simplifies staff training and leads to a more consistent way of working.

• Greater reliability: Distributed cloud solutions increase reliability.

• Recurring sales: Customer loyalty and contract terms enable predictable monthly income.

• Simplified customer communication: Service packages contain ready-made descriptions and combine variable price structures with service

• Conservation of resources: Better automation and optimisation save resources.

   

Steps To Successful Transformation and Implementation

To transform your business model into that of a Managed Service Provider (MSP), you should:

Review Existing Services and Processes

Identify which services are suitable for an MSP model. This may include identifying recurring services, scaling your infrastructure and implementing automation tools. Your existing contracts may be able to be converted into new service packages. Additional services can expand and round out your portfolio. Find out basic metrics to plan for the future (e.g. technician time per device per month approx. 10 minutes).

Define Clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Develop transparent price structures and organize your service into scales so that you can also set internal operational targets. Service levels can be time limits (e.g. initial response to inquiries within 4 hours), reliability (e.g. 99% of working time can be worked stably - this corresponds to approx. 5 minutes per 8-hour working day) or an average security level of level C, B or A.

Team Training

Invest in training your team to ensure they have the necessary skills for managed services. New procedures and processes must be known. Failure and exception scenarios must be documented and trained (e.g. power failure, internet failure, storage problems, backup recovery). It is very helpful to have the know-how to deal with different software interfaces in order to be able to use MSP tools more efficiently.

Use MSP-capable Tools

Use software solutions for efficient management, monitoring and automation of services. These tools usually include functions such as

• Remote monitoring and management of IT systems

• Patch-management

• Safety monitoring

• Backup and recovery

• Ticketing systems

• Reporting

• Invoicing

MSP tools help you to proactively monitor your customers' infrastructure, identify and resolve problems at an early stage, increase efficiency and improve service quality. By using MSP tools, you can reduce your operating costs, increase customer satisfaction and expand your service offering. Put yourself in your customers' shoes: SMEs are also constantly changing and focusing more and more on their core business. IT is usually a necessary foundation that can be built up efficiently and with the necessary knowledge via external partners such as MSPs.

lywand: The Optimal Solution for MSPs

Multi-tenant Surface

Monitor the security situation of your customers at a glance on the lywand Partner Dashboard or in the analysis page. Multi-tenant tools are the foundation for MSPs to continuously expand and improve their business. Avoid using separate stand-alone solutions for each customer.

Comprehensive Overview of Security

As an MSP, you are responsible for the security of your customers. You will not realistically achieve 100% protection, but it is possible and necessary to significantly reduce the risk of a hacker attack (or the possible consequences). Gathering information is the first step here - the more, the better. For this reason, it is also necessary to check the customer's entire infrastructure and not knowingly refrain from checking parts of it.

Regularity

Consistent and comparable results on the security situation of customers enable continuous improvement and optimization of processes.

Automation

The workload is reduced to a minimum, which in turn allows the entire customer landscape to be monitored and improved. There are far fewer manual errors, and the documentation of processes and onboarding of employees is simplified. Ultimately, the amount of resources required makes all the difference. Automated hacker attacks can only be countered with further automation.

Interfaces

Integration into existing systems and the use of the corresponding interfaces improve coordination and communication between the main responsible parties in the company. Technicians can continue to work in their existing processes and, for example, process measures to improve the security situation directly in their ticket system. Reports can be collected at management level.

Quality Assurance

Comprehensive IT suites cover several service areas for the IT service provider and are attractively priced. However, the strengths and weaknesses of such suites must also be analyzed and understood. It can make sense to use specialized tools for specific purposes. Especially in the security sector, an "outside view" or a "third-party tool" is necessary in order to be able to create objective evaluations.

Bottom Line

The MSP business shows us unmistakably how a modern way of working is possible not only for large companies, but also for much smaller customers. Scalability, quality and security are brought to the fore - and the whole thing is very flexible and adaptable to your resources.